NEET paper leak, UGC-NET errors: 'NTA has lost trust, should be dissolved'

The National Testing Agency (NTA) delayed acknowledging massive errors in the UGC-NET exam for seven weeks to protect itself from public outrage, sacrificing the future of nearly nine lakh students in a deliberate cover-up.

Amid recurring controversies ranging from NEET paper leaks to repeated questions and spelling errors in UGC-NET, the agency faces a severe crisis of credibility and competence.

On the latest episode of AI With Sanket, The Federal spoke to Maheshwer Peri, Founder, Careers360, about the NTA's systemic failures, its lack of academic expertise, and why the agency must be disbanded to restore trust among students.

The Central government's initiative to centralise exams through the National Testing Agency was intended to bring efficiency and transparency. Yet, from NEET to UGC-NET, the NTA seems plagued by incompetence and controversy. What is going wrong?

I do not want to make assumptions about corruption, but there is absolute incompetence. There is no two ways about it.

Look at the UGC-NET English paper. Out of 150 questions, 67 were exact word-by-word repetitions from two years prior, including the multiple-choice options and their order. The exam was conducted on June 25, and by July 1, complaints started flowing in about spelling errors, factual inaccuracies, and repeated questions.

It does not take seven weeks for a committee to verify that 67 questions out of 150 were repeated. The NTA knew there was a problem out there. That is why they did not declare the answer keys for six weeks, which usually happens within three days. It was only when students threatened to protest on August 11 that the NTA released keys for 84 subjects on August 10, and then dropped a bombshell on August 16 announcing a re-examination for three papers.

This delay has derailed the entire recruitment process for research fellows. They held onto the problem because they lacked the courage of conviction to acknowledge another major failure while already dealing with the NEET controversy. That reflects a severe lack of integrity and complete incompetence.

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Do you think the delay in addressing the UGC-NET issues was caused by the NTA trying to manage the NEET crisis first?

There is no two ways about it. They clearly knew that questions were repeated and that there were serious errors requiring a re-test. They simply delayed announcing another failure because they were terrified of the fallout while the NEET protests were active at Jantar Mantar.

They lacked the courage to come out clean. Now, they have to explain why it took seven weeks to realise that 67 questions were repeated from 2024. It is ridiculous. They do not seem to understand the emotional toll and disruption this causes students. If they had announced the issue on June 30 and rescheduled the exam immediately, students would have finished it by now. Instead, they compromised students' interests to protect themselves from criticism.

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If an agency's core mandate is to conduct examinations and it fails so consistently, what is the root cause?

The bigger problem is that the NTA is trying to conduct examinations without any academic understanding of the subjects, difficulty levels, or testing objectives.

For instance, when NEET physics and chemistry questions were set by an IIT professor in a previous year, the paper turned out to be far too difficult for medical aspirants. In NEET, biology and zoology should test higher difficulty, while physics and chemistry should be relatively easier. The NTA lacks this academic expertise.

It operates merely as a technical body connected to 3,000 to 4,000 centres, handling printing and paper transport. They have no understanding of test design or question bank creation, relying entirely on outsiders. If an external setter creates a flawed paper overnight, it passes through because the NTA lacks the internal capability to evaluate or audit it. Setting up a committee that takes seven weeks to spot simple repetitions and spelling errors proves their total lack of expertise.

Also read: NTA announces retest for 3 UGC-NET papers after complaints of errors

How were exams like the UGC-NET handled prior to the NTA, and was that system better?

You cannot make the contractor who builds a bridge its architect and engineer as well. The NTA is essentially a contractor managing 5,000 test centres, not a true testing body. It should strictly handle logistics, while academics must helm the examination process.

Consider the proposal to make NEET a computer-based test for 22 to 23 lakh students. Even JEE, which has 14 lakh candidates, is conducted across 10 sessions over five days because test centre capacity is capped at around 1.5 lakh seats per session. You simply do not have the infrastructure to test 22 lakh students simultaneously on computers in a single session.

Tests like SAT or GMAT run throughout the year in controlled environments. If you force a single-day exam online, normalisation becomes an issue; if you spread it out over 10 days, agencies like the National Medical Commission (NMC) object. The solution is to bring academics back to define what, why, and how students are tested, while restricting the NTA strictly to logistics.

Is the NTA as an organisation viable, or do we need structural changes?

Whatever you call the body, someone has to manage exam logistics. But the current NTA has lost so much trust among students that it is best to dissolve it.

The government set up the Nandan Nilekani task force to review exam processes. Whatever recommendations they make, executing them through the NTA will fail because the trust deficit is insurmountable. For the first time in over a decade, we saw the government bending backwards due to widespread student agitations on the streets.

We need a new framework that places academic teams from premier institutions—like the IITs for JEE—directly in charge of conducting their respective exams. The logistics can be handed to a separate entity, but academic oversight cannot be outsourced.

Does outsourcing critical academic functions on a contractual basis lie at the heart of this breakdown?

Yes, that is the core problem. You cannot have a hospital administrator performing surgery.

It is unbelievable that a committee needed seven weeks to identify repeated questions or spelling mistakes that anyone could verify in two hours. They postponed dealing with the issue to protect themselves from immediate public outrage, throwing nine lakh students under the bus in the process.

Look at how accountability has been handled: the Education Minister, Higher Education Secretary, and UGC Chairman were shifted or faced heat, yet the NTA chief remained in place. They claimed 47 people were sacked, but 29 of them were mere contractual workers from outside agencies. Throwing numbers at the public is just a face-saving exercise.

Additionally, the NTA’s tone towards students has been hostile, threatening legal action against those raising concerns. You cannot bully a vulnerable, anxious generation of students who feel cheated. They have completely lost the faith of the student community, and it will be nearly impossible for them to regain it.